


Silhouette

by WingsforWinter



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Archangel Castiel, Episode: s11e23 Alpha and Omega, Gen, M/M, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-30
Updated: 2016-05-30
Packaged: 2018-07-11 06:06:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7032295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WingsforWinter/pseuds/WingsforWinter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean is gone.</p>
<p>Sam pauses, swallows hard and exhales through his nose, blinking back tears. Cas wants desperately to comfort him, knows the words he wants to say, but he knows that if he opens his mouth a terrible sob will escape and nothing more. </p>
<p>He can feel the grief rolling off Sam in waves and knows that Sam can feel his pain just as sharply. The weight of despair is so great within the confines of the car that Cas wonders how they are both able to breathe at all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Silhouette

**Author's Note:**

> I was burnt out from writing for so long but the finale wouldn't leave me alone till I got this out. I may or may not be adding more to it when I have the time.
> 
> Unbeta'd, so all mistakes are mine.

 

_Dean is gone_ , Cas thinks.

 

He has to keep repeating it in his mind, over and over again. _A broken record_ , Dean would say.

 

_Dean is gone_ , he thinks, when he and Sam reach the car and he almost slides into the back seat out of habit.

 

_Dean is gone_ , he thinks, when Sam jams the button on the radio as soon as the impala revs to life, killing the opening riffs of Ramble On before Robert Plant can sing about falling leaves.

 

Sam pauses, swallows hard and exhales through his nose, blinking back tears. Cas wants desperately to comfort him, knows the words he wants to say, but he knows that if he opens his mouth a terrible sob will escape and nothing more.

 

He can feel the grief rolling off Sam in waves and knows that Sam can feel his pain just as sharply. The weight of despair is so great within the confines of the car that Cas wonders how they are both able to breathe at all.

 

_Dean is gone_ , he thinks, as Sam starts driving, slower than Dean would. Both hands on the wheel as Dean’s rarely were.

 

The driving itself is unnecessary, because when Chuck healed Lucifer, he healed Cas as well, gave him another ‘upgrade’ even. He could feel the power shifting beneath his vessel, the strange awareness of being able to do things he only could when he played God all those years ago. He could snap his fingers and the impala would be in the garage of the bunker, but he refrains. He knows that driving has always been a form of catharsis for the Winchesters. He imagines he would have felt better now than he had in years if it wasn’t for the invisible hand clutching at his throat or the incessant burning behind his eyes or the terrible, sinking, rotting pain in his chest.

 

_Dean is gone_ , he repeats, because the part of him that isn’t drowning in sorrow just can’t believe he is really dead.

 

No, not dead, _gone_ , because that bomb was designed to kill Amara, explode her into a thousand billion pieces and scatter her across the universe, and Dean’s soul would have suffered the same fate. He must have, because after everything, Cas thought he’d be able to feel the passing of Dean’s soul. During the apocalypse he knew immediately when those men had taken the Winchester’s lives, felt it when Dean had stopped his heart to talk to Death, and even with stolen grace festering within him he felt the terrible truth when Metatron’s blade took Dean from him yet again. But this time, nothing. If he closes his eyes, he imagines he can still feel Dean's soul on this plane. It feels as though Dean is still alive, and Cas thinks that may be what hurts the most, what will drive him mad with grief, because this was not death, but annihilation.

 

If Dean were merely dead, Cas would have the power to bring him back. With the abilities of an archangel, Cas could stroll into heaven or hell or purgatory and take Dean home without a fuss, could heal Dean’s body or remake it if he had to with little trouble, but he could not fix this, so for all the power and ability, Cas feels nothing but useless.

 

Dean is not dead, and will not be there when Cas escorts Sam’s soul to heaven after what Cas will ensure is a long life. He will not be in the memory of the impala, rolling down a perfect two-lane road, or a field setting off fireworks with his brother, or the kitchen of his childhood home. He will not be in any of the happy memories he’d made since the last time he was in heaven, or the Roadhouse with all of his friends. Cas was looking forward to guiding him to Charlie’s heaven, and Kevin’s, and Bobby’s, and his parents’. Showing him the Garden after he had gotten a chance to restore it to what it was before he’d ruined it. He wanted to show Dean the places he would go when he needed a respite, to share his first home with Dean as Dean had with him, to share everything with him, once they had the time.

 

But _Dean is gone_ , and at once he realizes the implication of being an archangel. With God, Amara, Death, and Lucifer gone, he is possibly the most powerful being left. He will live for all eternity. Forever. Without Dean.

 

_Dean is gone_ , and he thinks of watching over Sam, waiting out the rest of Sam’s life and then spending all of eternity tracking down the atoms of Dean’s soul, weathering the millennia alone while he combs through the universe.

 

_Dean is gone_ , and he thinks of how his perception of time has changed so much in the last few years. He remembers centuries flying by before he met the Winchesters, and now the thought of living through another day seems to be too much.

 

_Dean is gone_ , and he thinks of flying to the garden where Dean sacrificed himself for the world and joining Dean in oblivion now that there is no God to drag him back.

 

For a moment the thought seems so tempting he almost gives in. He can feel his wings tensing behind him, ready for flight, but he resists. He made a promise to Dean and he will keep it. Sam must come first.

 

_Dean is gone_ , and he thinks of using all his worthless power to make it so that everyone on earth knows what Dean did, the sacrifices he made so that they may live.

 

_Dean is gone_ , and he thinks of all the missed opportunities they both had, of those last few moments with him, where he was too scared and sad to do anything but clutch at Dean, wanting to beg him not to do this but knowing that it would only make it harder for Dean and would ultimately change nothing. He thinks of those last few minutes with Dean, wishing that things were different, that his stupid plan to let Lucifer in had actually worked, that he would’ve been able to spare his friend this fate, that he didn’t waste the last few months stuck in a corner of his vessel instead of being there with his friend. Wishing with all his might that he had stayed with the Winchesters all of the times that he left for no other reason than thinking it was for the best. Wishing that he’d had more time, just a little more time.

 

_Dean is gone_ , and he doesn’t realize just how much of his consciousness is tied up in those three words until they reach the bunker and as he spews meaningless platitudes at Sam, he fails to notice the woman dripping blood in the doorway to the war room until it is too late and he is blown out of the bunker with a stronger banishing sigil than the one he taught the Winchesters. 

 

Dean is gone, but Sam is still here, and he is in danger. The knowledge that he has something to direct all of his rage and pain at comes almost as a relief, and he pities the woman if she thinks he will be stopped so easily. Sam is the only piece of Dean he has left, and Castiel will honor Dean's dying wish with everything he has. He feels the rage change him, harden him. He feels wrathful in a way he hasn't since he fell, and he knows those responsible for the break in at the bunker will pay.

 

As soon as the sigil's power wanes, Castiel locates the bunker in his mind, opens his wings, and flies. 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from the Pablo Neruda poem "Don't Go Far Off"
> 
> Don't go far off, not even for a day, because --   
> because -- I don't know how to say it: a day is long   
> and I will be waiting for you, as in an empty station   
> when the trains are parked off somewhere else, asleep. 
> 
> Don't leave me, even for an hour, because   
> then the little drops of anguish will all run together,   
> the smoke that roams looking for a home will drift   
> into me, choking my lost heart. 
> 
> Oh, may your silhouette never dissolve on the beach;   
> may your eyelids never flutter into the empty distance.   
> Don't leave me for a second, my dearest, 
> 
> because in that moment you'll have gone so far   
> I'll wander mazily over all the earth, asking,   
> Will you come back? Will you leave me here, dying?


End file.
